by Al Macy
I pulled the grappling hook from my bag. Good thing I’d brought it. There was nothing to tie my rope to—nothing in a good place. The hook had wickedly sharp tips on its three claws, and I pushed two of them through the gravel on the roof and into the layers of tar paper and whatever. When you throw a hook, you never know what you’re going to get, but this was solid.
My pack back in place, I transitioned from the edge of the roof to the rope and lowered myself until I was on one side of the window. Locking my ankles to the rope, I pulled myself over and looked in. The room had a night-light on as if for a child. Perhaps the mob boss was afraid of the dark, but more likely, it made things easier for his night nurse. The door to the room was shut. I watched for a while. He was clearly asleep in his hospital bed.
Pulling myself over, I climbed into the window. A noise at this point might waken Mizrachi or, more importantly, alert the guard who probably sat on a chair outside the door.
I could see fine—no need for my flashlight. The Oscar stood on the shelf as before, but a clear plastic bag had been placed over it. It wouldn’t do to have someone pick it up absentmindedly and ruin the prints of my fingers. I’d gone over the three options I had at that point.
My best option was to wipe off the prints then swing the statue down onto the temple of the sick, sociopath mobster. Hell hath no fury like a mob boss scorned, and if I left him alive, he might figure out who had scorned him. For God’s sake, the guy deserved it, just for having me kidnapped. But as I’ve said, I don’t go in for the rough stuff. Unless it’s necessary.
The second option was to steal it. Maybe mail it to the Disneys. Not good. I could get caught with it in my possession. Even if I didn’t, Mizrachi would figure things out, and we’d be back to the mob-boss-scorned thing.
The third option, the one I chose, was to take it out of the bag, wipe off my prints, and place it back where it was. I did that, but when I reached out to place it on the shelf, I had an idea. I almost chuckled out loud. It took me only a minute to accomplish and, with the statue back on the shelf, I left. Out the window. Up the rope. Put away the hook. Tiptoe across the roof. From the edge of the garage, I checked the watch-goon in the car. He was slumped down. Perhaps he wasn’t asleep, but he wasn’t watching effectively.
I climbed down the tree and slithered away, the reverse of my path to the house.
I drove home with the heat on full blast. A thoroughly enjoyable job, even though nothing went wrong. How could I give this stuff up?
CHAPTER TEN
“Of course is not true. Why would say such a silly thing?” I poured us both some more wine.
Bolton and I were celebrating our three-month anniversary at the famous Cliff House, overlooking the Pacific. It was three months since we met going by the calendar, but Bolton’s job required frequent several-day trips for seminars, workshops, and other meetings. So, our time together had been significantly less. That worked okay.
We’d just had a wonderful seafood dinner and were lingering over a bottle of white wine.
“Not silly at all,” Bolton said. “Al Capone arrived at Alcatraz on a train.”
Our relationship had developed smoothly. That’s not to say we didn’t have fights. We did, usually over little things. He brought out my stubbornness, and we both had tempers. His was, perhaps, even worse than mine. Perhaps.
We still had our separate condos but stayed together most nights. I’d taken him to meet Zaharia, and I’d once met his mother when she was visiting.
I shook my head. “I don’t know why you’d lie about that. I mean—”
“It’s not a lie.” His face darkened, with bunched-together eyebrows and a flush of red on his cheeks. As if he’d gotten an instant sunburn.
I put my hand on his. “Am sorry, sweetheart. I meant make it up. I meant to say, ‘I don’t know why you’d make that up.’ I didn’t mean to say ‘lie.’” I’d caught Bolton in a few white lies before. Nothing significant, but the ease with which he told them was troubling. And when I called him out, it didn’t go well.
Of course, who was I to speak? In a sense, my life with him was a lie. He had no idea I was a jewel thief. Or ex-jewel thief. Maybe ex.
“Is there a difference between making something up and lying?” His sunburn wasn’t fading.
“Yes. This time. You made it up for fun. Maybe to be silly. Not really a lie.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” I squinted and cocked my head.
“We’ll have a bet.”
“A bet that Al Capone arrived at The Rock on a train?” I sipped my wine, thinking. Had Alcatraz ever been somewhere else? No, it is island. Was there ever a bridge to Alcatraz? No, that would have been silly. And I’d have heard of that.
“Yes. If I can convince you that he arrived at Alcatraz on a train, I win.”
“And …”
“And you have to … uh … get a tattoo.”
I laughed. “I don’t like tattoos. They last forever. I would choose tattoo?” At least Bolton had de-escalated our confrontation into a friendly bet.
“No. If I win, you have to get a tattoo of … a map of Romania. On your butt.”
“Ha! Have thought this through? You would see it more than I would. Are sure you want to be thinking of Romania when—?”
“Okay, somewhere else. Wherever you want.”
“And if I win, you get a tattoo of United States. Including Alaska and Hawaii. On your butt.”
Bolton held out his hand. “Deal.”
We shook. Bolton held up a finger then disappeared into the front of the restaurant. He came back with the elderly maître d'.
“Tell her what you told me,” Bolton said.
“About the train?”
“Yes.”
The man, old enough to be someone’s great-grandfather, turned to me. “Ma’am, in the thirties, they had to move Al Capone from Atlanta to Alcatraz. They put him on a special train, they called it the ‘Forty-Thieves Special.’ It had bars on all the windows. Understand?”
“Sure,” I replied.
“The authorities were convinced that some of Capone’s gang members would try to help him escape during the trip. So, when the train arrived here, instead of transferring him and the bad guys to a boat, they just put the train cars on a barge and tugged it out to Alcatraz.”
“Thanks, Jim.” Bolton had a smug look on his face. The maître d' returned to his post.
“Cute but no cigar. He didn’t take a train to Alcatraz.” I smiled.
“I didn’t say that. I said he arrived at Alcatraz on a train.”
“Is train without locomotive?”
“Now you’re just—”
I held my hands up. “Okay, okay. You got me.”
We stopped by my condo and took an atlas with us to the Moth and Dagger Tattoo Studio in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. I elected to have it on my right side, just above my waist. Just the outline of Romania. My first, and last, tattoo.
* * *
It happened when I was jogging in Golden Gate Park. The black limousine began pacing me, traveling around six miles an hour. I knew what was coming. Time to get it over with.
The car accelerated and stopped ahead of me. Two goons jumped out and stood in my path. The rear window opened, and one of the goons pointed to it. I leaned down.
Ignazio Mizrachi himself was on the driver’s side. Maybe he was having a good day, health-wise. He leaned forward. “May I give you a ride?”
I took a moment to catch my breath. “Did nurse let you out for a trip? Maybe you ran out of pabulum?”
His face darkened for a second, then he recovered. “Why make this difficult, Ms. Petki? I just want to talk for a few minutes. I can take you anywhere you want.”
“I’m exercising, I’m not going anywhere, dimwit.” I wanted to push him but not too far. He was a sociopath—no conscience at all. He’d kill me on a whim with no remorse. I wanted him angry enough that he’d take his mind out of gear, but it was a dangerous
game I was playing. “I guess you’re a little confused. It’s okay.”
The two goons crowded me against the car. One opened the car door, the other opened his jacket, showing me his oversized gun. I flashed back to Bucharest.
I got in and sat on a seat that faced backward. A goon was directly in front of me, and Mizrachi was to my right. The scent of old cigar smoke and Vicks VapoRub filled the car. A green oxygen tank sat on the floor, and Mizrachi occasionally sucked on a tube like an addict smoking opium from a hookah.
“How have you been, Viviana?”
I said nothing.
“Okay. I’ll get right to the point. We’d like your assistance in some simple heists. We have several experts on our elite team, but our lock man has unfortunately been detained. The hauls will be huge, and I’d give you a larger cut than the others.”
I said nothing.
“You’re forcing me to speak crudely, Ms. Petki.” He paused to cough. “In case you haven’t connected the dots, let me spell it out for you. If you refuse to help, I will turn the Oscar statue over to the authorities. When they find your fingerprints on it, they will be on to you like tie-dye on a hippie. Then they will themselves connect the dots and pin many of your other jobs on you. You will go to jail for a long time.”
“And that would help you how?” I asked.
He frowned. “Is it not obvious?”
“As a threat, has value, but when I refuse, as am doing right now, turning the statue in gives you no advantage. As revenge, perhaps, but that won’t help you with your little heists.”
He coughed some more then took another drag on his oxygen tube. “You are not afraid of prison?”
I looked out the window.
“You are not afraid of what your Uncle Zaharia will think?”
That jolted me. Was able to keep the shock off my face? “How do you know—?”
“We know a lot about you, Viviana. Much more than you realize. Intimate details.”
What did that mean? “Go ahead, do what you gotta do. Can I get back to my exercise now? I’m sure you want to get back to your hospital bed.”
“I’ll bet your uncle’s lab is a dangerous place.”
I clenched my teeth.
Mizrachi fumed for a moment. “Get her out of here.”
The car stopped and the goon in front of me grabbed my wrist. His goal seemed to be to fling me out onto the street, but I twisted my wrist and snapped it out of his grip. I stepped out then leaned back in. “Your threats are weaker than your lungs.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Andrei was having one of his better days. He was spending the morning with me in my condo. I’d given him a puzzle sent to me by a friend in Romania. The puzzle-cube had been invented by a Hungarian, Ernő Rubik and was gaining popularity as a toy in his home country. The trick was to manipulate it until each side of the cube—no, it’s too hard to explain. But I’d heard that it took the inventor himself a month to solve it the first time. I gave up after an hour. Andrei solved it in ten minutes.
He was playing with it, setting up different patterns, barely even looking at it. Sometimes it seemed that his world was primarily tactile, not visual. As if he had a supernormal sense of touch.
What that kid could do if released from his mental prison.
Andrei seemed to prefer being in the same room with me. It wasn’t clear-cut, but if I went into my kitchen, he more often than not followed. On that morning, I sat reading the Ken Follett book Eye of the Needle.
The phone rang, and I answered it. It was Bolton.
“Would you like to come over for lunch?” he asked. “I still haven’t made you a grilled cheese sandwich.”
I smiled. “I thought that was joke.”
“I never joke about grilled cheese. How could you think that?”
“Well, it’s got to be another time. I’m hanging out with my nephew.” Nephew was an easier concept than first cousin once removed. At least when speaking with Americans. Besides, he felt like a nephew to me.
“Bring him along. That’s the kid who’s retarded, right?”
La naiba! “Idiotule. I told you he isn’t—” I looked over an Andrei, who was in another world “—that. What you said. He’s very smart, there’s just something … ach, I explained it to you before.”
“I’m sorry, Viviana. I wasn’t thinking.” Bolton knew to back off when I swore in Romanian. “Really. Please forgive me. Do you think it would work for you to bring him here?”
He would have to meet Andrei sometime. Would Andrei enjoy it? Probably not. “Okay, we’ll be over, but give us some time, okay?”
After I hung up I spent a while describing to Andrei what we were going to do, laying out the plan.
We arrived at Bolton’s condo at 12:30. He opened the door and bent down, one hand on his knee. “Hey, buddy. Nice to meet you. High five.” He held his hand up.
Andrei ignored it. I should have spent more time preparing Bolton. He reached over to tousle Andrei’s hair, but I caught his wrist in time.
Bolton frowned at me. “What?”
“He doesn’t like to be touched. Follow my lead.”
Bolton caught on quickly, and things went as well as could be expected. Andrei was calm. He headed for the wall of paintings. “Hold on, Andrei.” I turned to Bolton. “Is it okay for him to touch them?”
“Sure thing, buddy, you can touch them all you want. They’re not real masterpieces, after all.” To me: “Are his hands clean?”
After he washed his hands, he seemed fascinated with the paintings, following the strokes of oil on the canvas. I breathed a sigh of relief.
I watched Bolton prepare the sandwiches. There was more of an art to it than I’d expected. I discovered that the key was prodigious amounts of butter and oil, almost more than the bread could absorb, plus the neon orange cheese slices, melted to perfection.
They were a big hit. Bolton and I ate ours with glasses of Anchor Steam beer from a local failing brewer. Andrei had a Coke. Afterward, Andrei returned to the paintings. I desperately wanted Bolton to understand how my nephew was very intelligent deep down. I showed him the cube puzzle and challenged him to solve it. He soon gave up.
“Are you sure it can be done?” he asked.
“I gave up after an hour, but Andrei solved it in ten minutes.”
“He’d seen it before.”
“No. Absolutely not. You can’t get these here in America.”
“Are you sure he didn’t cheat or something?”
“Of course not,” I said. “Come, I’ll have him show you, but he may not be interested any longer.”
We got off the stools, but Andrei was no longer in the living room. “Andrei!” I called, knowing I wouldn’t get an answer.
He hadn’t left the condo, so he had to be in Bolton’s bedroom. We trooped in, and there was Andrei, making a tactile examination of some more paintings.
“What the hell!” Bolton yelled. I’d never heard him shout so loudly.
I turned to where he was looking and froze. The door to Bolton’s huge safe was wide open. From my angle, I couldn’t see in. Bolton slammed the door shut.
I’d kidded him about the safe before, but he said it was for valuable artworks. Something related to insurance. He’d never opened it for me, and I’d forgotten all about it.
I suppressed a chuckle. Having Andrei solve the cube puzzle would be anticlimax at this point.
Bolton looked at him. “Did he take anything? Can I search him?”
“No, you cannot! He didn’t take anything. He enjoys opening safes, that’s all.”
“That’s all?” Bolton stopped in mid-breath. “That’s all?” His mental gears were turning, and I watched him go from outraged to fascinated.
“I told you he was smart.”
Bolton blinked. “But it’s impossible. How could he possibly do that? How could he know the combination? I changed the combination when I got the safe. Nobody knows it. I don’t understand.”
“You must n
ever tell anyone. It’s just something he can do.”
“It’s incredible.”
I nodded.
“Can I watch him do it, or does there need to be a curtain?”
“A curtain?” I cocked my head.
“You know, like with magicians. They always put up a curtain, so the audience can’t see the actual trick happen.”
“No.” I sat on the bed. “No curtain.”
“I’ll make you a deal. I won’t ever tell anyone if you have him do it again. And let me watch.”
“Bolton, you realize what would happen if this got out. He’d be kidnapped by criminals. Criminals who didn’t care a bit about his well-being. They’d probably put him in a cage. He’d be a slave. It would kill him.”
He looked at the safe. “Right.”
“But anyway, he knows the combination now. He won’t be interested in doing it again.”
“I could change the combination.”
I thought for a while. “Okay, we’ll try it. You promise never to tell anyone?”
“Yes.” He held up one hand. “I promise.”
“Andrei. If Bolton changes the combination, would you like to open the safe again?”
We’d forgotten his board at my condo, but he gave a slight nod. Good! He rarely communicated that way. I gave him a hug. Although he hates a light touch, he’ll tolerate a deep, firm hug. From me, anyway.
“Okay,” Bolton said. “I have to find the instructions for how to change the combination. I worry that I’ll forget it and won’t be able to open it.”
“Well, that’s actually not an issue anymore.” I took Andrei into the living room. After half an hour, Bolton called us in. I sat with him on the bed and Andrei went right to the safe. He put one hand on the door and started working the dial. He looked off into space. No way he could see the numbers.
Andrei’s enjoyment radiated off of him. This was his life. I imagined him working with a locksmith, consulting out to open safes for legitimate reasons. For owners who’d forgotten the combination. It was a pipe dream. Word would get out. Criminals would do anything to get him working for them.